5 minute read

Robotic Nurses

Abstract

Throughout history, innovation and technology has drastically changed the way humans have lived their lives and how long humans live as well. This can be shown in innovations like the plow and what it did for agriculture, electricity and what it did for way of life, or even something like automobiles which defined how humans travel and interact. These examples show how a creation not only betters the lives of the individual but helps evolves our species in its totality.

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Robotic Nurse
  3. Nursing Homes
  4. Ethics
  5. References

1. Introduction

In accordance to advancing changes in technology and medicine, we’ve seen life expectancy improve as a parallel. This is directly due to improvements in technologies such as MRI, ECG, X-Rays and a wide range of detection tools that can either prevent or slow diseases, broken bones or cancers which are commonly known to cause chronic issues or even kill people on a frequent basis.

Now as we continue to improve on technologies more and more issues are getting solved ever faster and more efficient. Robotic Nurses are a development to improve the speed at which tasks such as these are accomplished. Even now, getting tests or care from healthcare providers take a lot of time and is a long process. So, things like robotic nurses can be a gamechanger in healthcare treatments.

2. Robotic Nurse

There was a clinical trial that was performed to measure how a robot was able to perform drawing blood samples from humans. This would be equivalent to someone getting blood drawn to check their cholesterol. The difficult part of this would be finding the vein on an individual and accurately placing the needle to draw the blood. The robots in use would theoretically be controlled utilizing ultrasound imaging in order to understand where to go and place the needle.

According to Rutgers University (where the first clinical trial was done), “the ultrasound image-guided robot had an overall success rate of 87% for the 31 participants who had their blood drawn, while the success rate was 97% among the 25 participants with easy-to-locate veins, according to Forbes.” Through this data, the success overall is extremely high and very encouraging. If there is concern for the 13% that didn’t work, most human nurses aren’t able to draw blood from most individuals because of the lack of the vein showing up. So, in that sense the difference in performance from human to robot is not huge and doesn’t create a discrepancy in that sense. [2]

3. Nursing Homes

In addition to using robotic nurses to perform tasks such as blood work and administration, there could also be a market for robotic nurses caring for the elderly. In places in regions such as Japan where the life expectancy is high and birth rate is low, this could be especially useful. According to Stanford, over 30% of the Japanese population is over the age of 65 years old and there is an average of 1.2 births per woman. [1] Consequently, the number of caretakers for this older generation is limited and is in need of a boost. That’s where our previous need for robotic nurses would come in. When it comes to situations where there is a need for a home caretaker, if the robotic nurse experiment were to work, these robots could be assigned to certain homes or can aid in health treatments where there aren’t enough nurses to undertake a particular task. This not only applies for Japan but can be said here as well. There are many individuals who are reluctant to go to a nursing home or even have to wait long hours for healthcare treatment. So, adding these nurses would enhance efficiency of time and work for patients involved.

4. Ethics

With anything involving robots, there will always almost be a question of ethicality in terms of actions and decision making by that particular AI powered system. In order to install a robot to a particular healthcare or homecare function, that robot would have to make daily decisions on things to do in terms of situations or actions performed by the patient that would warrant a response. As pointed out by Stanford an example is if there was a situation where the robot engages in conversation with a patient by asking them to take their medication. In the case that the patient refuses the robot would need to first show the patient respect but also deduce why the patient refused the medication [1]. This grey area is ultimately the difference between the human and robotic nurse. A human nurse would find ways to understand the reason behind the patient’s refusal and they could empathize with that patient as well. As Stanford points out, there is no morally just or empathetical gesture to a robot’s thinking or responses so for now that is the issue that lies with them [1]. Another thing is privacy issues that could occur especially when in situations that involve homecare tasks. Having the robot understand when or when not to invade privacy during certain times is an issue that would have to be resolved as well.

5. References

[1]: Cs.stanford.edu. 2020. Robotic Nurses | Computers And Robots: Decision-Makers In An Automated World. [online] Available at: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/2010-11/ComputersMakingDecisions/robotic-nurses/index.html#:~:text=Today%2C%20robotic%20nurses%20are%20robots,distances%20to%20communicate%20with%20patients. [Accessed 20 October 2020].

[2]: Class Slides